Advaith Siddharthan's profile documentDescription for Advaith SiddharthanAdvaith SiddharthanAdvaith SiddharthanAdvaithSiddharthanReaderMy research specialisation is in Computational Linguistics and Data Science, with a focus on communicating complex data and making information and data (particularly telemetric data) accessible through text analytics, summarisation, reformulation and natural language generation. I have a particular interest in Citizen Science, and in particular, technologies that break down the divide between professional scientists and lay public and facilitate the meaningful engagement of the public with science.1ae3629c2d86b69c7f725cf647678783d39df900The Open University account for Advaith Siddharthanas36438Advaith Siddharthan's membership at KMiAdvaith Siddharthan's participation in Planting for PollinatorsPlanting for PollinatorsPlanting for Pollinators2017-01-012017-03-31Generating recommendations for bumblebee-friendly gardeningEnvironmental concerns are often communicated to members of the public as series of complex threats that demand urgent action on multiple fronts. Here, we propose to use state-of-the-art digital technologies in online outreach aimed to encourage positive behaviour in the real world and through this engage members of the public with the key environmental issue of pollinator declines. We capitalise on people’s personal connection with their gardens and build further outreach capacity by linking up technologies piloted in a focussed online citizen science initiative (BeeWatch) with a wide hands-on UK nature outreach network (OPAL). Using photographic records of bumblebee species submitted by citizens, we offer tailored gardening advice aimed at providing flowering plants for a range of bumblebee species throughout the season (Funded by NERC).Advaith Siddharthan's participation in Blogging BirdsBlogging BirdsBlogging BirdsBlogging birds is a new concept that allows you to find out more about the lives of Red Kites, one of the UK’s most stunning bird species. Unfortunately, mankind hasn’t always celebrated the red kite and from the 18th century right up into the late 20th century they were hunted and killed as they were viewed as a threat to farming and game-shooting interests. This led to red kites becoming extinct in England and Scotland, with less than 10 pairs remaining in Wales in the 1940s. However, since then red kites have been successfully reintroduced to 10 sites around the UK. Using cutting edge computing technology, red kites will tell you a story about their day to day lives – without any help from humans! Keep coming back and you’ll see new stories about every day and every week of our red kites' lives as they gradually make their come back into the Highlands of Scotland. (Funded by RCUK)Advaith Siddharthan's participation in BeeWatchBeeWatchBeeWatchBeeWatch is a citizen science project developed in collaboration with the Bumblebee Conservation Trust (BBCT) and the University of Aberdeen. Citizens submit photographs of bumbelbees, then have the opportunity to identify the species (and this is a hard task) using an online key. BeeWatch deploys a range of AI technologies, both for automating the provision of informative and motivating contextual feedback to recorders through Natural Language Generation, and for combining independent species identifications by different users using novel Bayesian methods for verifying records. BeeWatch builds on pedagogical research on the role of formative feedback in motivation and learning; in particular, about expectations of the learner from feedback and devices such as parallel empathy. (Funded by RCUK)